Cross-country Evidence on the Demand for Money

In this article we examine money demand issues using cross-country data, for 48 countries over the 1980-1995 period. In particular, we investigate conventional money demand functions, for both narrow and broad aggregates, and the role that institutions, financial structure and financial development may have in the demand for money. On the basis of possible heterogeneity within the cross-country data set, we exploit Bayesian classification and finite mixture models to partition the data based on statistical similarities and multi-dimensional structures. Are-examination of our initial regression results indicates that a great deal of heterogeneity exists between different groups of countries.